


Unnatural History

by Chianine



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 14:38:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2195574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chianine/pseuds/Chianine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It would be superfluous to tell you that I've had a lot of time to think. I can thank Dr. Lecter for that.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>He's the one that taught us that love is not always in giving, but also in taking away. He took from Margot and I everything that could keep us apart. And now we're happier than ever.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unnatural History

The warm sunlight peeking through the blinds tells me that it's mid-to-late morning. For the seventh time, Johnny is delivering his famous anti-authoritarian line to the the _Law and Order_ dad before he drags Baby onto the dance floor. As the music gears up, I notice Margot standing in the room. She walks to the bedside table and uses the remote to shut the film off. My ears begin to ring immediately.

I try not to look too relieved when Swayze's gyrating hips and the blasting music that accompanies them are finally put to rest. She spent fifteen minutes punching random buttons on the remote last night, cursing under her breath as she was preparing this torture. I had to bite my tongue when I so desperately wanted to explain to her how to feed the dvd player to all monitors but I was supposed to be surprised and horrified at the prospect of watching _Dirty Dancing_ all night long. At least she unraveled the mystery of the volume control in half that time. I don't think she will ever understand how much I indulge her.

Margot's punishments are getting more creative but she still underestimates my ability to make the best of things. The first viewing was rough, especially with the sound turned all the way up, (and on a system like this I can tell you that “all the way” up is more than headache-inducing) but upon the second, third, and past the sixth, I really was enjoying it. My favorite part is when Penny gets knocked up and they find her cowering in the kitchen, shaking and crying like a beaten terrier. I had forgotten about that scene, but seeing it again was like running into an old friend. Over and over and over again.

I hope I've absorbed enough of the dialogue that's been pounded into my brain to give accurate recitals to Margot, 'thank yous' for remembering this Hollywood masterpiece and touchstone of our youth and shared history. I hope she didn't think _I_ could ever forget. _Dirty Dancing_ had been Margot's very favorite movie when she was a little girl, sneaking away to her room to watch it on her pink television set with pockets full of marshmallows or chocolate chips, mimicking the dancers on-screen between bites. I don't know, maybe she wanted some handsome buck like Johnny to come and rescue her from the comfort of her affluent life or maybe she really believed you could dance your troubles away. Charming thought, isn't it? Either way, Margot doesn't dance anymore.

One day I found her watching it and cued her in to the fact that Johnny is a male prostitute. Subsequently I had the pleasure of explaining to her how some people have sex for money. Surprisingly, she still liked the film. The next time I found her watching it we were alone in the house, so I decided to use the opportunity to show her first-hand what Johnny and Baby do when she comes to his cabin late at night. We were only twelve at the time, but Margot always wanted to grow up fast, and I thought it was an experience we should share. I hoped it would improve her experience of the film, but she never seemed to want to watch it again. Or dance. 

 

Today she's looking fetching in a blue pantsuit with an adventurously low neckline and heavy black earrings. I remember her telling the maid last night that she wouldn't be going out today so this ensemble must be for my benefit. 

“And how was your little ride?” I ask, because I refuse to complain about the film and because she goes riding everyday. She must have gone very early to have already changed and gotten herself tarted up to sit around the house all day. 

“I didn't go this morning,” Margot answers, then begins preparing the disgusting liquid nourishment that's forced down my gullet daily, though this is something the nurse usually does (the one with the rhinestone crucifix and the frog lips that Dr. Kenner drags along with him). She's probably just trying to look busy.

“Why not?” I ask.

“Cyril still has that infection in her hoof.” She drops something, “The vet says she should rest another week.”

“I'd suggest that you just take one of the stallions, or even that fat gelding they keep for the campers,” I say, “but I know you've never been very good with the boys. Even the emasculated ones.”

“No, Mason that was always more your area.”

I laugh. “Oh don't be jealous, Margot. Besides, after all these years, you're finally the pretty one!”

She says nothing. I hate when she drops the ball like that.

“What's wrong, Margot?” She's pouting so I decide to throw her a bone. “You a bit too groggy for conversation? Maybe you didn't sleep well last night? That's too bad. I slept like a baby.”

She twists back her head to smile at me and then leaves the task she's pretending to care about to join me on the bed. There is the thrilling prospect that something fun is about to happen. She has that playful look about her, the one that I love, the one that makes me forgive her all her more dull and nauseating traits.

“Mason dear, I've told you not to keep yourself up all night with the television on.”

This thing she does where she pretends to forget that I'm paralyzed is getting old but I decide to play along rather than embarrass her. I'm a good brother like that.

“Well, you know I just can't help myself with _that_ one. All the great memories we share in connection with it. Am I right?”

Margot's face twitches slightly. My response isn't the one she wanted. Maybe I was so supposed to be sorrowful, or make pathetic excuses for myself, or proclaim myself a 'changed man.' She still doesn't see that I'm not tethered to any sense of guilt or shame, the prerequisites of any successful punishment (one that incites remorse or penitence). I understand that other people subscribe to the false and hypocritical concept of justice, but I'm beyond that. What I know is that Margot tortures me because she _can,_ and because she knows I'll cover for her.

Her face smooths over as she adjusts to another failure. Margot will have to settle for common violence. She reaches over to pet my hair, grooming me for the attack. I brace myself. After a couple moments of what I suppose you could call tenderness, she tilts her head to one side and changes the subject. “You know what happens next month, don't you?”

“Not your period!” I exclaim with glee, and have a pretty good laugh though Margot's face remains placid and dull. She's still such a party-pooper about that whole thing. “Of course I remember,” I say, giving an exaggerated eye-roll to her dismal sense of humor. It's what I have to work with in the way of body language. “ _Thirty-three!_ Our Jesus year, Margot! Have you compared your life with that of the Lord? How do you measure up? I mean, besides the homosexuality and failed fratricide, of course.”

Then the fingers she's threading through my hair twist and grip around a thick lock. Before I can say something cheeky about my own sins and careless attitude towards them, she's ripped the hair out of my head with unexpected strength. 

I scream, unfortunately.

“ _Jesus,_ Margot!”

The sting blooming on my scalp hurts like hell, but the yanking causes an even more excruciating pain in my still-severed spine. At least _she's_ happy with herself, smiling as she twirls my hair between her fingers like a gift from a long-distance lover. She brushes it back and forth across her lips flirtatiously, which I can barely see because my eyes are welling up. I'm trying to recover from the assault, blinking away tears when I feel a warm wetness where she's scalped me.

“Am I bleeding? I am, aren't I? Margot, what am I supposed to tell Dr. Kenner?”

She leans over me so I can see (blurrily, barely) down the front of her flimsy blouse while she investigates. I can tell by her amused snickering that it's bad.

“It's fine. Tell him you fell out of bed,” she says, rearranging my hair to hide the pool of blood I feel gathering. “Should be believable after your mishap in the pig pen.” With that she sits back, squinting when she sees the tears. “Are you _crying,_ Mason?” Her smile widens.

“It's an _involuntary_ physical reac-”

She's lunged forward, her tongue running over my eye. It's not the first time she's done this, and I'm sure she finds something poetically just about it. To me it's less than trite. She's had coffee this morning and I know I'm going to be smelling it until it dries.

Despite the grotesque lick, I'm touched when I see her slip the lock of hair into her blazer pocket. 

“All right,” she says, standing and smoothing herself out. “I'm off.”

“Why?” I ask urgently. She just got here and she's not supposed to be going anywhere anyway. “Where are you going?”

“Out,” she replies, picking up her purse. “Shopping.”

So the pantsuit wasn't for me. She can't do this to me, it's not fair. Everything that I take from her, and all I want in return is for her to spend a little time with me, but she has to go out and spend my money with her button-stitching friends.

“A _date?_ A new one already? What's this one's name? I don't know why you bother, Margot, they never last very long.”

She glares.

“Tell me her name.”

“No.”

Margot doesn't let me meet her 'friends' anymore or even know who they are. It's probably because she knows I have a private detective on my payroll that's very thorough, which is necessary because I prefer photographic proof of my sister's transgressions. It's for her own good.

“I'll be back to see you later, Mason. Get some rest. I know you've had a long night.”

Before she leaves, she puts Sesame Street on one of the monitors. She knows this makes Kenner and his assistant uncomfortable. As my physician, he's required to have access to all of my records, including those referencing my convictions. I'm not sure why she thinks this would bother _me_ , though.

She comes over to kiss me goodbye and I tell her to get the hell out. After she leaves I'm glad for the headache to remember her by, but then I feel blood trickling down my forehead and into the eye that's still wet. This is too much. I have no choice but to close it and wait for Kenner to arrive. As it drips down into the gauze, I decide to make an appointment with my detective that day to have him see what he can find about Margot's new playmate. 

 

Kenner is ten minutes late and I give him hell for it. As he's cleaning blood off my face I tell the nurse, who has three little daughters, to put Sesame Street on all the monitors and turn it up. I hate this nurse, but at least she's competent with the remote. Kenner has the gall to demand an explanation for my injury so I'm forced to threaten having his wife killed if he doesn't forget about it. It's Margot's fault that I have to do this.

When enough morphine is flowing in my blood they begin their regular work. I'm sort of euphoric as Kenner dresses the scalp wound but luckily I come back to myself as they start stripping the gauze from my face. Just in time for the unveiling. A week ago I ordered a mirror set up so I could see how I looked beneath the gauze. When I saw myself I was not disappointed. Now I like to see it every day.

The cool air feels like winter on my raw flesh. A mouthpiece has been created to replace the function of my lips and cheeks, keeping saliva in my mouth where it belongs. Kenner gingerly pulls this out, and I can't help but laugh every time I'm greeted by by my smiling face of Death. A part of me wishes I could stay like this all the time if only it wasn't so impractical. 

The nurse still winces at the sight of me. She might be a better actress around patients she cares about, but I'm not one of those. I feel privileged to experience her honesty.

At present, the primary concern is to keep the exposed meat that we call my face moist and free of infection. Kenner goops some antibacterial salve on me while Number Two's job is to catch the drool falling over my chin with a towelette-thing. The saliva mixes with puss and has a sickly yellow color. Strings of it stretch disgustingly from my face to her gloved hands as she tries to exchange the soaked towelette for a clean one. 

Once that's over, the nurse wraps a new dressing around me while Kenner checks some monitors and scribbles in his log, probably hoping to find something that might mean a decline in my well-being. Unfortunately for this world, I'm healthy as a horse and not going anywhere. Literally.

As Dr. Kenner and his assistant begin to pack their things to leave, I remember the phone call that I wanted to make. Of course, there _is_ a daytime caretaker that stays in my room and tends to my needs, (who should be arriving shortly) but I feel compelled to annoy Kenner's nurse a little more. I ask her what her name is, and she frowns. It's Candace. I repeat the name, relishing and lengthening the vowel of the first syllable and the snake hiss of the last consonant. I can see that she's doing her best to tolerate me and I imagine Dr. Kenner comforting her later in his Lexus, giving her a gold star in the form of a handsy shoulder rub.

I push a little harder, calling her Candi without asking permission, and tell her that _that's_ what I'm going to call her since I don't think I like the name Candace after trying it out. She's not keen on Candi. I offer to call her Rita, or Donna, or Dumpster if she'd prefer that, but then she settles for Candi. I instruct her to take my phone and find the number for a Rhea, James. She dials the number and activates the speaker function. Before she attempts to set it on my bedside table, I tell her to hold it up in front of my face. Her flabby arms will surely get tired during the course of my call.

Rhea's secretary answers the phone and tries to tell me that he's in a meeting. I use some choice four-letter words to make it clear to her that I will speak to him anyway, immediately. Rhea's on the line in less than thirty seconds, enough time for me to ask Candi about that crucifix she wears around her neck. 

Rhea knows exactly the job I want him to do for me (as I've said, this isn't the second or even the third time I've sent him on this mission) but I detail the more distasteful tasks he's expected to perform and remind him that shyness has no place in his profession. I'm sure to use the most degrading and vulgar terms when describing both my sister and her sexual activities for the benefit of the two people standing in my room as well as the scum on the other end of the line. It's embarrassing, I know, but it's absolutely necessary. Bottom-feeders like these, they need to be reminded of how little respect they have for themselves. 

When I'm satisfied I've made my demands abundantly and colorfully clear to Rhea, I end the call and let Candi rest the pasty chicken-fat appendage she's cursed to have as an arm. 

Then the caregiver arrives and it seems like Candi and the doctor can't leave fast enough. 

 

I'm beginning to doze as I watch the caregiver settle into her little table and chair that's kept tucked into the corner of the room. With her magazines and water bottle filled with what I imagine is Kool-Aid, she brings a teddy bear out of a large handbag. She always has this bear. It would be too easy to torment her about it so I never have. It's dressed in a halo and a white gown: her guardian angel. Rather strange, but I find it comforting. I hope it's guarding over me, too. 

 

It's only three-thirty when I wake up again. This annoys me because I'm bored and dying for some _real_ company. Margot’s still out, though, I know because I can _feel_ when she's in the house. And when she does come home she may not come to see me simply because she knows how badly I want her to. Or maybe she won't come home at all... but I quickly abandon this train of thought because it pisses me off so much.

The caretaker sees that I'm awake and leaves her fluffy companion to help me relieve myself. During this process I ask her what her bear's name is. It's Clarence. Jesus, does that make me want to puke. I tell her she should get herself some more powerful friends in Heaven, like Michael or Azrael. People who _really_ know how to get things done. Why settle for a dough-faced, spineless simpleton when you can have someone who incinerates your enemies just by appearing to them? She doesn't see my way of thinking in this matter, which is apparent in the way she ignores me. 

I tell her to feed my eel when she's finished emptying the bedpan, even though this is a task usually reserved for the house staff. She gives me a _look_ , so I tell her that while she's feeding her, she can tend to the eel's excrement as well. She does as I tell her, netting a goldfish from the bowl that's kept in a small cupboard, and while she's leaning over the open tank, catching excrement in the same net, I decide to have Kenner find a replacement for her. I can't spend my days in a room with a stuffed bear named Clarence.

Long after I forget Clarence and this woman whose name I don't know, she will be unemployed and desperately seeking a minimum wage position somewhere, a middle-aged, unattractive heap of loneliness with swollen ankles, creeping nervously into interview rooms with employers half her age who can't stand the sight of her. She'll be turned down again and again, mostly because no one wants to suck the reek of her misery through their nostrils every working day. And when after months of searching, after her dignity and confidence have been obliterated, and she's clutching Clarence to her chest as they share a lunch of cat food-smeared saltines, she will remember me, and know that her suffering is nothing more than the result of my fickle whim.

{According to the report, I woke up one afternoon and found that I was being orally fellated by the teddy bear-toting nurse, named Doris Something-or-Other. Though the experience was more than a little upsetting, I told them to go easy on her, since she was obviously mentally disturbed (the bear) and requested that no criminal charges be filed. She would, however, lose her nursing license and her right to claim unemployment compensation.}

It's not enough to make people suffer only when they're in your presence, or even to leave a sting that lasts for a finite period afterward. Those are nicks and scratches, cuts that heal and leave no trace but in the memory of the one having received it. To leave a scar is better, but the cut that never heals is best. It festers, infects the entire organism and becomes something infinitely greater than the living wound that has nurtured the poison. The disease spreads, perverting the victim's body into a site of self-perpetuating misery that will continue to thrive long after the original perpetrator may even be conscious of his handiwork. 

As an ambitious, conscientious man, I expect nothing less than the best from myself. That's why I aim to make my influence constant in the lives of others even when they're far from me, and most when they want nothing more than to forget me. I want Candi to see me when she speaks to her daughters tonight, and again when she removes her crucifix before her bath. When she's sinking into the steamy water, letting Calgon take her away, imagining Kenner's sensual shoulder rub and touching herself, I want her to think of me and my vulgar words for her biology. When she takes her paycheck to the bank I want her to remember whose money she needs to buy those lacy, wireless, A-cup bras and matching panties for the pre-teen nymphets she swears she doesn't have pictures of in her wallet. I won't be thinking of her, but I'll have done my job, sullying every hour of her life away from me with the painful reminder that she needs me, however much she may hate me. And long after I'm dead or she's left my patronage, she will continue to think of me, and remember how much of her short life she gave to care for a being she despised. She can never have that time back, nor the places in her mind I will forever inhabit. I hope I can do this for all the people that have known me, and all those in the future whose lives I have yet to touch.

Sesame Street goes on forever, it seems. The endless march of unrelated vignettes, commercial-free and without any perceivable framing device seems to reflect exactly a toddler's understanding of life. Without beginning or ending. Or meaning, for that manner. It's starting to have an adverse effect on me.

I tell thunder-thighs that I'm ready for my quiet time and she responds by turning off all the monitors, using the opportunity to slam the remote on my bedside table when she's finished. I guess that's how mental defectives express themselves. The window on the far end of the room is open and I hear Cliff the groundskeeper mowing in the distance. (He's a drunk, and he's already lost two fingers to the wood chipper and the tip of his thumb to that mower. I watched him cut off the second finger when I was ten.) The sound coalesces with the hum of the aquarium, creating a peaceful and hypnotic white noise. Weightless and suspended in a languid broth of morphine and semi-vegetative existence, I sit and stew.

 

 

It would be superfluous to tell you that I've had a lot of time to think. I can thank Dr. Lecter for that. My transformation, from an empty shell of a man meandering blindly through a pointless existence, into a self-aware individual with purpose and direction, is completely due to his therapy. 

This is not to say that I've isolated myself in some sort of hermetic inner-life. Quite the contrary. I have, in fact, never felt more connected to the outside world and the things I love most in it. Particularly my family. My very, very small family. Just me, Margot, and our father. You've already seen how much closer Margot and I have become, and I plan to continue strengthening that precious bond. My other great mission is to find a way to show my father how thankful Margot and I are for all that he has done for us. I'm not talking about Papa, of course; he raised us to be nothing but greedy, thoughtless children. I see that now. No, I'm talking about Dr. Lecter, our true father. He's the one that taught us that love is not always in giving, but also in taking away. He took from Margot and I everything that could keep us apart. And now we're happier than ever.

By diligently removing distractions from Margot’s life, I am continuing Dr. Lecter’s program. Like mine, his love is a far-reaching, but adaptive and transmutable force that is both incessant and inevitable. It's manifestations are multiform (a broken neck, a childless home, a blossoming alliance with ethically questionable members of the intelligence community) but always recognizable to me, and when I trace them back to their source it feels like deciphering the language of destiny. Must be fun to possess the powers of God.

But seriously, I know that Dr. Lecter is not God. No, I see him more like a man-eating Carmen Sandiego, bopping around the civilized world with that pretty blonde therapist I hear has gone missing again, looking to dine his way into whatever fraudulent situation he finds most appropriate to his taste and performance abilities. If he has already rooted himself somewhere, it will mean patience for all of us who look forward to his homecoming. But I can abide. The projects already assigned to me by Dr. Lecter will keep me busy until we meet again.

 

 

At some point in my musings, I've drifted off. When I wake up, Margot is there. The room is dark except for the bluish glow of the aquarium.  
.  
She's drunk, stinking of scotch and cigar smoke. Her body is draped sideways over my waist and she's cradling her lolling head in one hand.

“What time is it?” I ask.

“Umm, its late. Why, you got somewhere to be?” She's drawling.

I know she's been to some dimly-lit nightclub or at least I hope it was dim because the cakey quality of her face make-up and the whorishly thick, chunky mascara job she's sporting are giving me second-hand embarrassment. 

“I want to talk to you, Margot.”

She laughs, her eyes rolling back momentarily. “About what?”

“About us.”

“Okay,” she says, patting my chest, “let's talk about _us._ ”

There are so many things I want to say to her, need to say to her, need for her to _know_ so that we can move forward, out of this rut of punishment and receipt. It's going to become stagnant. Nothing is more important than growth but she's distracted. Distracted with her false sense of power and her hedonistic pursuits. She thinks this is 'her time'. It doesn't even matter that she's drunk. This isn't something I can tell her or explain to her with words. She just has to _know_ it and to feel it. I can't guide her there, not in any way where she would recognize my influence. She has to choose. All I can do is blot out all her other options.

“Never mind,” I say.

My response is hilarious to her. I'm not usually one to dampen a mirthful spirit but she looks disgusting with her head thrown back and her mouth wide open like a Sesame Street puppet, especially with the dry, overwrought laughs that she's forcing out. I can always tell when she's acting because she's awful at it.

“That's enough, Margot. It wasn't that funny.”

She flops onto her back and rolls over to face the tank.

“Did she get fed today?” She's changing the topic.

“Of course.”

“What's her name?”

“She doesn't have a name. You know I don't _name_ things.” I respond.

“You named Pavlov...”

“What?” I ask, just before the memory comes back to me. I laugh. The runt I wrapped in a blanket and brought to Margot the day I fed one of her suits to the pigs. It died a few days later.

“I named Pavlov after _you._ ” I say. “Or don't you remember?”

I won, again. I can tell by the ice in her stare when she turns to glare at me. She picks herself up and leaves, defeated.


End file.
